Our lab is headed by Professor Stuart Grieve, Director of Imaging at the Charles Perkins Centre and a group leader at Heart Research Institute (HRI). The laboratory is based at the Charles Perkins Centre, but acquires data from a large hospital network across Sydney and Australia.
We have two main streams of research:
MBBS, BSc(Hons), DPhil(Oxon), FRANZCR
BRAIN RESEARCH PROGRAM
We operate a highly successful and innovative collaborative research program with a focus on translating cutting edge neuroimaging techniques to better understand the brain changes occurring in:
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Neurocardiovascular diseases,
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Depression and emotional dysregulation;
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Mild traumatic brain injury and surgical brain injury.
The key techniques used are diffusion MRI and resting state fMRI, although we also acquire cutting edge perfusion, structural, susceptibility weighted and task-based fMRI data. We recently used multiband diffusion imaging to acquire the highest ever in vivo dataset of 1014 direction across 8 shells, which produces a vast improvement in tract accuracy.
Our database contains over 1500 subjects, and we are currently acquiring further large cohorts in mTBI, perisurgical brain injury, depression and a large cohort study (CHRONIC) - which will explore the brain changes associated with cardiovascular and metabolic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and heart failure.
HEART RESEARCH PROGRAM
Cardiovascular diseases are the biggest cause of death in our society. Heart failure is a looming epidemic and we cannot diagnose heart failure early.
We aim to use imaging to understand heart failure & learn how to diagnose it early in order to prevent it.
Our research program focuses on translating cutting edge cardiac techniques to better understand the early pathophysiological changes occurring in:
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Aortic dilatation and related complications;
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Right heart failure secondary to pulmonary hypertension, congenital disorders and other causes;
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Left heart failure, especially from diastolic heart dysfunction and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
The program incorporates a substantial multidisciplinary research effort involving advanced cardiac MRI, cardiac physiology, image processing, computational fluid dynamics and programming. The key technique used is 4D-flow MRI, for which we are one of the leading laboratories in the world. We also apply a range of other techniques including strain, MRS, perfusion MRI and T1-mapping as well as computational fluid dynamics’ simulations to better understand imaging data.
